


Super Sargasso Sea

by actionreaction



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Entities, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Inspired by Meow Wolf: House of Eternal Return, Unethical Experimentation, christ this fic isnt as depressing as these tags make it seem, what if there was a house that was alive would that be fucked up or what
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 14,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28587144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actionreaction/pseuds/actionreaction
Summary: Martin’s got the keys loosely held in one hand, and with the other he is opening the mailbox. There’s only one envelope inside, and it’s addressed to the previous owner of the house, who has gone missing. Martin is an optimist, or at least he tries to be, but even he knows that whoever Jonathan Sims was, he’s not coming back.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood & Melanie King
Comments: 39
Kudos: 52





	1. Front Door

**Author's Note:**

> CWs for this chapter: None

It starts with a house.

Well, no, actually, if we want to be technical, it both starts and ends with a house, and everything in the middle is about the house as well.

It’s decently sized, two stories, with a fireplace. Three bedrooms, one bathroom. Beautiful floors. 

It is unremarkable.

However, as Martin Blackwood stands in front of it, letting the ambient sounds wash over him, he feels an odd sort of pulse. The house feels as if it is thrumming with life. The crickets, the faint rustling of the leaves. It is a lovely night in late July. The air is warm, and slightly humid. It’s the sort of air that makes it hard to tell where you end and where the rest of the world begins. 

Martin’s got the keys loosely held in one hand, and with the other he is opening the mailbox. There’s only one envelope inside, and it’s addressed to the previous owner of the house, who has gone missing. Martin is an optimist, or at least he tries to be, but even he knows that whoever Jonathan Sims was, he’s not coming back. Martin will likely stay here for a few weeks, find nothing, and then be driven back to London, where he will have to explain to Peter that this case, like all the rest, was a dead end. 

Fighting off the urge to open Jonathan’s mail, Martin finally walks up the steps. The wood creaks slightly beneath him, and even though there’s no one else for miles, he’s ashamed of causing such a disturbance in the night air. The key is a little difficult to turn in the lock, but he still gets it easy enough. 

The worst part of moving somewhere else is the smell. The previous owners always leave behind a smell, and Martin’s not sure if he’s just particularly affected by that sort of thing or what, but the first night in a new house is always odd. It feels almost like you’re in someone else’s house without permission. 

This house is no different, but the smell isn't the only thing left over. To his immediate left is a small area- it’s got a few short bookshelves, a desk with papers scattered over it, and a few paintings that were obviously works of progress. On his right is a sitting room, with a television in the corner and- _oh, wow, is that a VHS player? Retro!_  
Oh, and a fireplace in the wall and a coffee table sitting in front of a sofa. 

In front of him is the staircase, which he decides is going to wait until he’s seen the downstairs.

Going through the living room is the dining room, with a cabinet full of plates and glasses and a table that seats eight. _Jonathan Sims lived alone_ , Martin notes. He must have entertained a lot. 

To the left of the dining room is the kitchen, black and white tiles, a kitchen table that has a newspaper laying on it. The refrigerator is empty save for a mostly empty quart of milk that has gone bad and a half eaten container of strawberries that’s now gone completely mouldy. The cabinets have a mostly gone box of cereal, and three packets of instant oatmeal. 

The laundry room is through the kitchen, with another door on the far wall. Upon opening said door, Martin discovers that it’s merely the backdoor. 

Ascending the stairs, he’s met with a few framed photos, mostly of the same few people. A picture of a young boy and an old woman, and neither of them are smiling. A picture of a young man, possibly the boy from earlier, standing proudly with his degree. A picture of the young man, now less young, standing between two other people. They are all smiling, but the woman on the right is difficult to look at. Martin continues up the stairs. 

The hallway is straight, and the first door on the left is the master bedroom. He puts his suitcase there. The first door on the right is the bathroom. All the other rooms are bedrooms, and they are sparse, with beds and very little decoration. 

Martin makes his way back down the hallway to the master bedroom. It’s eerie- this was where Jonathan must have slept. He opens the closet to see coats. He looks in the dresser- the bottom three drawers contain shirts, pants, and socks. The top drawer contains photos. Hundreds of photos, on glossy paper. He’ll look at those later, he decides. He looks at the alarm clock on the bedside table, which tells him it’s 12:46 in the morning. 

As he gets under the covers, he feels as if he is somewhere he shouldn’t be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Front Door by MI and Flamingo Pink!, which is from the meow wolf soundtrack. Also, i *know* this chapter was just me describing a house to you. the other chapters will be better I promise.


	2. Carrion Suite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs:  
> -Spider stuff (Basically the same as MAG 81)  
> -Unethical Experimentation on a child  
> -Implied memory erasing

The next morning, Martin opens the drawer on the bedside table. Inside is a tape recorder and several tapes in chronological order. He takes the first one, dated 18/03/1995, and brings that and the tape recorder downstairs to listen while he heats up one of the packets of oatmeal. Peter had said, prior to sending him up here, that Jonathan tended to use analog technology and that the internet wouldn't help him much in finding him, that everything he needed would be written in notebooks and recorded on tapes. 

He hits play on that first tape. 

“Statement of Jonathan Sims, regarding…”

And then, a smaller, younger voice:  
“A spider.”

“Alright,” says the other person, “Statement of Jonathan Sims, regarding a spider. Statement given March 18th, 1995. Statement begins.”

The statement is… creepy. Jonathan is, apparently, eight years old when he sees a spider kill and eat a boy in his neighborhood. Martin doesn’t believe in the supernatural, if only just because he never gave it much thought, but as he hears the kid’s voice tremble on the tape, it's obvious he's been through something terrible. 

“Thank you, Jonathan. You’ve helped us a great deal. May I- oh, wait just a moment…” 

And then the tape finishes off with a click. 

Martin’s first thought is, ‘why the hell does Jonathan keep that by his bed at night?’, and his second thought is ‘Helped whom a lot how?

He almost wonders if it’s all a big prank Peter’s playing on him, but he doubts he’s got the patience for that sort of thing. He is being paid for this, after all. 

As he sits down with his oatmeal, he absently looks at the paper. “LIGHTS IN THE SKY,” proclaims the headline. He rolls his eyes, and then fishes out his phone to send a picture of it to Melanie, who has always loved that kind of thing. The image takes an entire minute to send- service here is terrible. 

He sits at the sofa and starts to paw through the papers. Immediately he starts to notice a few commonalities- the Magnus Institute shows up multiple times, along with someone named E. Bouchard, who is apparently the head of the institute. There’s a section of the binder that just contains hundreds of copies of what appears to be the same form, filled out numerous different times. He almost wants to ignore them, something about paperwork always making his brain shut off, but his attention is snagged by a line that reads “Subject: Jonathan Sims”, and he has to check the rest of the form to make sure he’s not misinterpreting. Surely they don’t mean ‘subject’ as in ‘test subject’, right?

But, no, the researcher describes assessing Jonathan's progress. He would, according to the date, be around nine years old at the time. The notes include details such as “Subject reacted poorly to stress” and “Subject seemed afraid of research staff”, the latter of which made Martin’s heart ache a little. What in the world happened to him? That poor kid.

Putting that aside for now, Martin decides to call Melanie, seeing as Jonathan hasn’t been around much to pay his internet bills. She picks up after the call drops a couple times, and answers the phone with “What’s wrong?”  
“I- what? Nothing’s wrong.”  
“I just figured that you’d only call me because the house you’re in is definitely, without a doubt, haunted as shit.”  
“I guess I wouldn’t rule that out.”  
“Yeah. Did you need something, though?”  
“Oh, yes, actually, can you research the Magnus Institute for me?”  
“Uh huh.”  
“And, um, can you tell Peter to drop some food off? Things are… pretty sparse here.”  
“Sure. Don’t want you starving to death. Would really kill the workplace vibe.”  
Martin snorts a little. The workplace “vibe” is already pretty dreary, with most of the employees working on cases with dead ends. Martin almost wishes he had been given one of those cases. Seems like they’re all researching shitty ghost stories, the kind he’d laugh at with Melanie given the chance, while Martin’s stuck in a “haunted as shit” house with no wi-fi. 

“Since the workplace vibe was so cheery to begin with.”

Melanie laughs, and ends the call with a “stay safe, don’t talk to any ghosts.”

So now Martin has to wait for her to report back with her findings. So, he wanders back upstairs to find another tape to listen to. 

The next one is dated 27/08/1997.  
It starts very loudly.

“Let me _GO!_ ” Says a young Jonathan Sims, and then, quieter but much more terrifying,  
“Jonathan. You’re a little old to be behaving this way. This will go by _much_ quicker if you’re cooperative, and then you can go back to class and see your friends. Easy as that.”  
“ _FUCK OFF_ ,” Says the kid.  
“ _Goodness_ , listen to the language. I’ll have to tell Mr. Delano to watch his mouth more closely. Sit still.”  
“This part _hurts_ , Mr. Bouchard.”  
“It’s a contact lens. Some people put them in every day. If it hurts you’re doing something wrong.”  
“Why can’t I wear my glasses?”  
“They get in the way of the machine.” Bouchard’s voice is exasperated in a way that tells him he has answered this exact question many, many times.  
“Why is Gertrude here?”  
“She wants to test a theory she has.”  
“About me?”  
“Well, partially.”  
An awkward silence follows as it becomes clear that Bouchard does not intend to elaborate.  
“Are you seeing alright? Good.”  
There’s the sound of a few switches being flipped, and then a soft electrical hum.  
And then, simultaneously, Jonathan is screaming and static is mounting, louder and louder, so loudly that Martin has to put his hands over his ears, and then- silence. For a few minutes, it is deadly quiet. And then, just as quickly, the sound returns, and a woman’s voice is shouting as well,  
“For christ’s sake, Elias, _turn it off_ -”  
And Elias says,  
“Get your hand off of that panel, Gertrude, if you know what’s good for you, so help me _god_ I am not going to have you destroy this research for nothing-”  
“He’s _screaming his head off_ , how is that nothing-”  
“He’s not even going to remember any of it in an hour-”  
They bicker for a few more minutes, and then it seems like Elias has finally powered down the machine completely. Jonathan is- it’s hard to hear. It sounds like he’s crying. The tape clicks off. 

Martin sits there, frozen, on the couch for a good long time after that. He thinks about the forms from earlier- the ones that said that Jonathan seemed “afraid of the researchers”. He thinks about how Elias said that he could go back to class. He thinks about a kid being pulled out of school and having this done to him and then having to go back and sit at his desk. He thinks about a twenty-nine year old recluse who went missing two months ago. He thinks about the unopened letter addressed to Jonathan laying on the kitchen table.  
His head starts to hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Carrion suite by andrew bird!
> 
> Also god i hate elias so much. bitch


	3. Banking on a Myth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs: None

Martin walks upstairs to the bathroom to rummage through the medicine cabinet, looking for an ibuprofen for his headache. He thinks about just laying down for a few hours, but he knows he would just worry himself into an even worse headache. There are a few prescription bottles in there, along with a bottle of cough syrup and a box of bandages, but nothing of use to Martin at the moment. So, Martin goes back downstairs for a look at the papers again. 

In the binder is a small section without a label, and it’s- oh. Martin had expected something terrifying, but it… looks like it’s mostly drawings. Crayon drawings, with neat handwriting in pen dating each one. Lots of stick figures- fortunately, this same handwriting labels each of the people. A tall stick figure with long blond hair is labeled ‘Michael’, and another tall one with… what Martin guesses is supposed to be a mustache, labeled ‘Eric.’ A few slightly shorter ones, too, with the one in a suit representing Elias, and two figures obviously meant to be older women, labeled ‘Gran’ and ‘Gertrude’. They strike Martin as being virtually indistinguishable, being drawn with similar clothes and identical frowns. The smallest figure, though, is one of a little boy with rectangular glasses, which is helpfully labeled ‘Jon’. 

There are lots of drawings, mostly featuring a configuration of one or more of these characters. There’s actually one drawing that was done by someone else, illustrating Jon and an older man playing checkers. It’s captioned, ‘Eric and Jon playing checkers (Jon won)’, which is in the same handwriting as that which labels the other drawings, but there’s another note below it which reads ‘but only because i let him win -eric‘. 

Jon’s drawings do get better as they go, though. It feels _incredibly_ personal. There’s a page with four polaroid photos taped to it, of Jon, Eric, Michael, and Gertrude. He wonders who put together this section of the binder- every other folder feels so cold and scientific, but this one is… for lack of a better word, sweet. Or it would be, if this little scrapbook didn’t serve to remind Martin that Jon was at the institute often enough for whoever it was to organize around 60 pages of art and letters and photos consisting of the time he spent there.   
He wishes he could just ask what happened, how Jon felt about the institute. Based on that last tape, it was horrible, traumatic, nightmarish. But it seemed like there were people there who really cared about him. People who he was friends with. 

Martin _likes_ a good story. He likes to get wrapped up in the plot, he likes to _understand_ it, to finally piece it all together. Unfortunately, the only person with all the answers isn’t there to answer them.

He is _itching_ to know what’s on the next tape.

He walks up the stairs again, and stops to look at the photos on the wall again. The first one, of the boy and the woman, is almost certainly Jon and his grandmother. And then of Jon and his degree. And then the last one of him and two of his friends, Martin supposes. These are the photos that Jon displays proudly. 

Which, of course, reminds him of the photos in the top dresser drawer.   
So, instead of reaching for a tape, he pulls out the drawer all the way and sets it on the bed to flip through.

It, like everything else he’s done, feels like a horrible breach of privacy. There’s hundreds of them, and they seem to span years, and it looks like Jon has scrawled a date on the back of each of them. The years are held together with rubber bands. So, he goes to the earliest one, labeled ‘19??-1987’. It’s all pictures of the same two people. Pictures of them at their wedding, a picture of the man cooking, the woman painting, general household scenes. The last one is of the two of them holding a tiny bundle of blankets, and Martin realizes _oh. These are Jon’s parents_. 

Years 1987-1990 are similar, incredibly domestic pictures of the three of them. There’s a picture of Jon bundled in a coat that’s as big as he is, in a tiny hat with a pom-pom, standing in the snow.   
And then, suddenly, no more pictures for over a year. 1991 is devoid of anything. However, in the middle of 1992, they start again- although much slower than before. And they stop again in 1994. Nothing for another three years, and then, in 1997, there’s a photo of a man. He’s not Jon’s dad, and the background looks like an office building, and- oh. It’s Michael. Martin can recognize the hair. He looks like he’s embarrassed to have his picture taken. The next few are extremely blurry, as it seems the photographer in question is turning around while taking them. 

1997 is full of printed out pictures of _everything_ \- a stapler. Michael. Eric. One of Eric’s shoes. An extremely close up, blurry picture of an eye that looks like Jon had tried to take a picture of himself but ended up having the camera too close. A picture of who must be Gertrude, sitting in her office reading something, but half of the frame is obscured by the door frame as if Jon didn’t want her to know he was taking pictures. 

The next few years also are full of photos- but it looks like Jon had started taking pictures of things he saw outside, too. Flowers, birds, and about 50 photos of stray cats. In 2005, there’s a bunch of photos of Oxford. In 2008, A picture of a woman with a tiny orange kitten in her lap, which she is smiling down at. Jon has vastly improved at photography- the lighting, the composition, it is a fantastic photo. He looks at the back of the picture, and he’s written ‘June 8th- Georgie and the Admiral’ there. Both of them show up multiple more times, and then slowly they stop showing up too. And then, in 2011, a familiar looking office. A picture of Michael again, older now, and someone with long black hair. A picture of Jon next to this person, as they grin at the camera. He flips to the back of this picture, too, and learns that this other person is named Gerry. A few more pictures of Michael, including one where he stands with a suitcase. 

2012 is the first time he sees the house in one of the photos. But it’s not in the foreground. It’s taken from the back of a car, and the subject’s profile is in focus. A man with greying hair, a pencil mustache. A precursory glance at the back of the picture confirms Martin’s suspicion that this is Elias Bouchard.  
He is talking to Gertrude, who sits in the passenger seat. The next photo is of Gerry, who is trying to hide his face, flipping off the camera, but he’s also obviously laughing. 

It looks like- god. It looks like a family vacation. He looks at the back of the pictures- ‘driving up here to do some testing’, reads the caption on the first one. ‘Gerry pretending to be camera shy’, reads the second. He’s about to look at 2013 when his phone starts buzzing.

It’s Melanie. He picks up.

“Melanie! Hi!”  
“Hey. I looked into the Magnus institute.”  
“Oh! Good! What did you find?”  
“Honestly? Not much.”  
Melanie sighs.  
“ _But_ ,” She continues, “I did find something really interesting.”  
“Melanie, if this is one of those things where it’s not actually that interesting but you’re drawing it out to make it seem cool-”  
“No, no, no, it’s not that. Okay, so the website is super sparse. However,” she says, and she’s obviously excited.  
“Melanie, please, the call could drop at any moment.”  
“ _HOWEVER_ ,” Melanie says, “There is a list of benefactors. Notable names include: Maxwell Raynor, Simon Fairchild, and-”  
“Fairchild? The space guy?”  
“Martin. I love you. I am clearly building up to something. Hush.”  
“Fine.”  
“And... one Mr. Peter Lukas.”  
“Wh… really?”  
“Yep.”  
“That’s. Huh. That’s concerning! I do not like that at all.”  
“Exactly.”  
“So… do you think Elias Bouchard and Peter are working together, or what?”  
“I have no fucking clue. I don’t like the implications that his… sugar baby, or whatever, lost his guy and so Peter sends you in to bail him out.”  
“First of all- sugar baby? Eugh. Second of all...it’s kind of our job?”  
“Yeah, but. God, it feels like more than that.”  
Martin sighs.  
“Yeah. It does. I guess I can ask Peter when he gets up here.”  
“Be careful, ok? Don’t get, I don’t know, kidnapped or abducted by aliens or whatever. This stuff is genuinely freaking me out.”  
“I’ll do my best. And, yeah, I’m worried too. Bye.”

He puts down his phone, and he leans forward, puts his head in his hands. Melanie likes a ghost story, but now that Martin's in one, she's afraid. The house feels haunted, or maybe just _alive_. It feels like he's standing on the edge of something he won't come back from.

Martin puts the rest of the photos away. Martin puts the drawer back in the dresser. And Martin crawls under the covers and goes to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally some slightly more happy jon content (jontent)


	4. Last Minute

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs:  
> -Unethical experimentation (mentioned)  
> -toxic relationships (mentioned)

Martin wakes up at 7:06 AM. He stares at the clock. Peter Lukas is bringing food to the house today. It’s 7:07 AM. He is going to have to ask Peter about the Magnus Institute, and he is going to pull up the screenshot of the institute’s website that Melanie sent him, which is a really bold move to pull with someone who is controlling your food supply for the next two weeks. It is 7:06 AM.  
Wait.  
The house must be getting to him, or something, because- well, time doesn’t work that way. He’s been alive for 29 years, and he’s fairly certain he’s got a good grasp on time.  
7:07 AM.  
Huh, maybe he just misread the clock at first. He’s always b-  
7:06. 7:07. 7:06. 7:07.  
The clock starts to blink rapidly between the two of them, before the entire thing freaks out and then-  
It is 7:08 AM.  
“ _Christ,_ ” Martin says out loud to himself, and finally drags himself out of bed. He slept for almost a full twelve hours, which he hasn’t done since he was a teenager, and it didn’t make him feel any better about the situation he was in. He selects another tape to listen to while he makes another oatmeal packet breakfast, ideally the last of its kind. He nearly fell down the stairs while he was going down, too, so it really was shaping up to be a fucking _stellar_ day.

The tape is labeled 19/04/98, and it starts halfway through a heavy sigh.  
“I feel so bad for that kid.”  
“I know, I do too-”  
“-It’s just- I have a son, you know, Gerry, and he’s not too much older than Jon is. Don’t see him too often. I guess Jon reminds me of him. All young and scrawny and dragged into this mess too early.”  
“I hope Elias doesn’t permanently mess him up.”  
“Probably too late for that. On one of the tapes you can hear him screaming and crying.”  
“I just wish we could help him somehow.”  
“The only thing that would help him would be to get him far, far away from here, but unfortunately, kidnapping is a crime.”  
“Doesn’t his grandmother _care_ that her grandson is some rich asshole’s science project?”  
“I’m sure she would care if she _knew_. Apparently Elias made it sound like some- I don’t know, some therapy thing. He’s good at covering stuff up.”

The tape clicks off, but only for a minute before a different conversation is overheard.  
“-And you couldn’t find a willing participant who isn’t an eleven year old?”  
“Mr. Delano. You know that it’s not as simple as finding just anyone who’s willing.”  
“Then what sets him apart? Why is Jon a better subject than anyone else?”  
“The incident with the spider. It proves him to be incredibly susceptible to manipulation. You’re familiar with what the researchers call ‘The Machine’, correct?”  
“I- Yes?”  
“It’s a transuniversal device. That little gift of Jon’s- to be so malleable is what makes him the perfect candidate. He has an open mind. It’s like sending a probe into space- send Jon out into the unknown, reel him back, and have him tell us what he found.”  
“And the… screaming?”  
“The process is having your body practically stripped apart, and then reassembled elsewhere. Screaming is, as you can imagine, a fairly normal side effect. We didn’t get as far as I would have liked, but maybe with practice, Jon will get better at it.”  
“So you’re opposed to replacing him.”  
“Yes. Completely.”  
“Right. In that case, Mr. Bouchard, I will have to turn in my resignation. I want to help Jon, but I cannot in good faith continue to work somewhere with practices like these.”  
“Eric. You can’t quit now, I know you’re just as invested in this project as I am. We’re so close.”  
“Fuck off. The only thing you’re close to right now is a hell of a lot of child endangerment charges.”  
Elias practically snarls.  
“Fine. Get out of my office. Clear off your desk.”  
And the tape clicks off.

Martin texts Melanie, _Can you research Eric Delano for me?_  
And she responds, _Sure! Glad to hear you survived the night._  
Martin doesn’t laugh. 

He knows the machine isn’t in this house. He looked, that first night, in all the closets and all the cabinets and all the rooms. But it creeps him the hell out, the thought of something that could just whisk him off into a different plane of existence. Good for Eric, honestly, standing up for what he believed in.  
The Gerry thing is something he hasn’t unpacked yet, and he’s not sure what to make of it.

 _Oh, and Gerry Delano. Maybe it’s short for Gerard? If either of them are willing to schedule an interview, that would be great?_ He texts Melanie.

He’s rinsing out his bowl when there’s a knock at the door. He knows it’s Peter, but he cautiously checks the peephole anyway. Sure enough, his boss is standing there, weighed down with shopping bags, so he opens the door.

“Martin! How are you holding up?”  
“I’m doing just fine, but I’m glad I’m not going to just be living on instant oatmeal from here on out.”  
“Ah, yeah. There’s eggs, milk, bread, flour, sugar, and, since I know how you are, a box of tea. Plus some pasta and sauce. I assume there’s already spices in here because it’s not like those go bad?”  
They absolutely do go bad, but he’s not going to make a big deal about it.  
“Yes, thank you, Peter. I’ll get a start on putting all this away in a moment. Stick around for a moment? I’ll put the kettle on?”  
“I do have a job to get back to, Martin.”  
“Ah, yeah. Er, I just wanted to know if you knew anything about the Magnus institute?”  
“Yeah, I do! I’m well acquainted.”  
“What do you know about their projects?”  
“Ah, not much. Most of that stuff was over my head- haven’t taken a science class in, hmm, about fifty years! So, not much.”  
“You’re listed as a benefactor. On their website.”  
Peter laughs, actually _laughs,_ hearty and deep.  
“You know, I completely forgot about that. Yeah, that Bouchard’s quite a convincing fellow.”  
“Oh, god, did he blackmail you or something?”  
“No, we used to be married. Which, depending on your perspective, is worse.”  
“You- you _married_ him?”  
“Don’t be homophobic, Martin. Besides, it’s not like we _stayed_ married.”  
“I- you- I am _literally_ gay, Peter. Why’d you get divorced?”  
“He’s a _dreadful_ needler. He’ll annoy you till he gets what he wants. I’m a patient man, but he’s a _lot_. I need time by myself, sometimes, you know?”  
“Is he… manipulative?”  
“Yes! But he was no better than I was. Why are you quizzing me about my ex husband, again?”  
“Because he’s the head of the Magnus Institute, which is a pretty crucial part of this case.”  
“Ah, I see. Good work, but I’ve got to be heading out. Wish you all the best!”  
As Peter all but trips over his own feet to escape, Martin mulls the information over in his mind and, like any good friend, decides Melanie needs to know about this _right the fuck now_ , so he calls her.

“Martin? I haven’t found anything on Eric or Gerry Delano yet, sorry-”  
“Melanie. They were married.”  
“What?”  
“Peter and Elias. They got married.”  
“They _WHAT?_ ”  
“They did get divorced.”  
“ _STILL!_ Oh my god.”  
“I don’t know what to make of it! I was expecting something… I don’t know, way more evil to come out of that conversation. But no! Apparently Elias coerced him to fund the institute while they were married and Peter barely even remembers it. He seemed to get a laugh out of it.”  
“I am still incredibly worried about your situation, don’t get me wrong, but this is- so great. My sugar baby guess wasn’t that far off!”  
“It’s still gross, though.”  
“Oh, absolutely.”  
Martin can practically hear the smile in her voice- she’s always been a terrible gossip. Not that he’s any better.  
“Oh, and what did Peter bring you?”  
“Bread, pasta, eggs, stuff like that. Real basic, but I get the impression Peter’s not used to cooking for himself.” Martin gets up to paw through the bags. “A few tomatoes. Sliced turkey.”  
“Looks like you’re going to be making a lot of sandwiches.”  
“Yeah, probably. Don’t mind it. Food hasn’t exactly been on the forefront of my mind, to be honest?”  
“Is everything, you know… _spooky_?”  
He looks around at the house, the linoleum floors of the kitchen, the soft pink walls.  
“That’s the strangest thing, actually,” he says, “It’s all so normal. It’s quiet. But it feels like at any minute, the other shoe is going to drop.”  
“I get that.”  
There’s a pause. Out of the corner of Martin’s eye, he sees the letter poking out from one of the bags.  
“I’m gonna have to go, I think? Groceries to put away, and all that.”  
“Oh, yeah, of course! ”  
“Bye.”  
“Bye!” 

Martin puts his phone in his pocket, and he does put away all the groceries. And finally, he’s done, and he picks up the envelope. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous about this. He slides his thumb under the flap, and pulls out a card. It’s got a date in the corner, 19/07/16.  
It reads:  
_Dear Jon,  
It’s been a while since I’ve heard from you! I wanted to send you an actual letter, just in case your service is on the fritz again. I did text you, but I know it’s hard for you to answer sometimes. Enclosed is a picture of the Admiral, because he misses you and I’m sure the feeling is mutual. You should come down and visit sometime!  
-Georgie :) _

He looks at the envelope. Georgie Barker. He sighs, gets out his phone one last time.

 _I am SO sorry, mel, but can you research Georgie Barker, too?_  
She texts back quickly:  
_It’s fine, but geeze, slow down! I c_

Martin stares at that, trying to decipher it, but before he can, she texts again.

_Wait. Georgie barker?????? Like the podcaster?_

_I don’t know? I’d probably be able to identify her if you sent a picture?_

There’s a couple minutes of silence.

 _This is the Georgie I know:_  
And there’s a picture of the same woman from Jon’s photos.

 _Yes! Holy shit how did you-_  
Martin’s about to hit send, but then he processes some of that interaction and revises it:

_That’s her. But how do you know her?_

_Well, I listen to her podcast? And we’ve met at a couple ghost things, you know, because of my youtube channel. And we had coffee together one time.  
...please don’t tell me she’s a murderer or something_

_No, but she knew Jon. And I think someone should tell her about what’s happening,_ Martin says. 

_I can give you her number?_

_That would be fantastic,_ Martin says, and his hands are shaking, he’s so excited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title of this chapter comes from Last Minute by MI! Also, sorry that this was pretty much all conversation. There are some chapters coming up in the near future that I'm super looking forward to writing and posting but I needed to get some things out of the way first >:)


	5. That which is now hath already been

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs: none

Martin doesn’t immediately call Georgie. He saves her contact in his phone, though, and he starts drafting a first text.  
_Hi, Georgie, I_  
No.  
_Is this Georgie Barker? I’m a friend of Melanie’s and_  
No! Maybe if he paces around this _godforsaken_ bedroom some more-  
_Jonathan Sims is missing and I wanted t_  
Fuck this, actually. Martin sighs and sticks another tape in the player, instead. 

“How old are you now, Jon?”  
“Fourteen,” says the boy on the tape.  
“And… what’s your favorite movie?”  
“Alien.”  
“Oh, wow. I was expecting you to say something less…”  
“Scary?”  
“Less gruesome? Do you have any other favorites?”  
“I liked Jaws.”  
“Doesn’t your gran live in Bournemouth? Did that make you scared of going to the beach?”  
“No. People kill sharks more often than sharks kill people. Besides, _you_ were the one who showed me Jaws! Why are we even doing this?”  
“It’s like a journal! You’ll hear yourself talking about what your life was like! Who’s your best friend?”  
“You know it’s you, Michael.”  
“I’m flattered.”  
“Not like you’ve got much competition.”  
“Not true! There’s Gertrude and Mr. Bouchard. And there was Eric, before he quit.”  
“They do not count.”  
“What’s your favorite song?”  
“Hmm. Okay. There’s this one that my gran plays sometimes, and it kinda goes like-”  
And Jon is humming the song for a few seconds-  
“Like that. I don’t know the lyrics or what it’s called, but I like it more than most of what she listens to. I don’t listen to a lot of music, to be honest.”  
“Where do you see yourself in five years?”  
“College. Ummm… and if I’m lucky, I’ll have a cat.”

There’s a solid minute of silence. Then, a different scene.  
“I can pay for it, Ms. Sims.”  
“Gran, he’s tricking you, don’t fall for it.”  
“Jon. Hush.”  
“No, he brings up a fine point. I’m not tricking you, but… it’s true that there are some… strings attached.”  
“And what are those strings?”  
“Jon must continue his weekly appointments here. Just for the four years that he’s in college, of course, although after that I would offer him a job if he wished.”  
“That is quite generous, Mr. Bouchard.”  
“What do you say?”  
“I think I’ll take you up on it.”  
“Don’t I get a say? It’s my life.” Jon says, indignant.  
“Jon, I’m not going to be able to afford college for you without help, and this man is offering to pay for you in full if you come here once a week.”  
“Fine.”  
So this is… in 2004 or 2005, if Martin had to guess. Huh. A significant gap between the two recordings. He pops this one out, and puts in the next one, dated August 2013.  
“Come on Jon, you don’t need to record it. We’re not even doing anything.”  
“I do, Gerry, I need to keep track of it all.”  
“You sound like Bouchard.”  
“Ugh. You know I don’t want to, I just…”  
Jon inhales, deeply.  
“Things go wrong when I’m around. And if we end up dying out here in the woods, I don’t want it to be lost.”  
“Ray of sunshine, you are.”  
“Fuck off, you know what I mean.”  
“I do. You’re the only reason I have pictures of my dad. I get why you don’t want to lose stuff. I just don’t think you need to be recording every single second, you know?”  
Martin pauses the tape, gets up for a moment, and picks up the top dresser drawer again. Rifles through the photos. In August 2013, there’s a few photos. Gerry, fiddling around with various scientific equipment. Gerry, again, hand outstretched to the camera like he’s trying to grab it, and then-  
Jon. Photos of Jon himself are few and far between, but he’s-  
He’s laughing in the picture, unreserved, holding a cigarette loosely while the smoke curls up around him.  
He’s gorgeous, Martin realizes, and it’s completely embarrassing so he immediately shoves it to the back of his mind.  
Might as well finish the photos. Not because, uh, he wants to see more pictures of Jon, which is absurd and hugely unprofessional (!!!), but simply because he’s only got three more years to go. Yeah. Okay!  
The end of 2013 sees Jon and Gerry returned to London, more pictures of cats, including one printed out on plain printer paper. The Admiral! Martin smiles down at the now fully grown cat like he knows it personally. A few new characters, too, back in the Magnus institute. A man and a woman. The very same people, Martin realizes, from the photo on the wall. Tim and Sasha. In 2014, more pictures of them, Jon, Gerry, Tim, and Sasha. In 2015, they are all at the house, together. Jon is much shorter than the other three people, and there are several photos of them using the top of his head like an armrest while he valiantly pretends to be mad about it.  
In 2016, the house. The house. The house.  
There are very few photographs of people in 2016. Two months before Jon disappeared, last March, there are a lot of photos of what look like complete darkness. In May, there is what looks like a self portrait of Jon- It’s different from what he saw of him before, carefully put together. In this photo, Jon is shirtless, in sweatpants and socks, and his feet aren’t.... okay, it’s a trick photo, definitely staged, not real. His feet don’t touch the ground, and his back bends just enough to look uncomfortable, and- and out of all of it, this is what freaks him out the most- he looks like he’s glowing, almost. He puts the photos back. He takes a few deep breaths.  
He texts Melanie, _any updates about Eric and Gerry?_  
Melanie texts back pretty fast:  
_Yeah. But you’re not going to like it._  
His heart sinks.  
_Eric died in 2010. And Gerry died last January._  
_Shit,_ he says.  
_Yeah. Sorry :(_  
Martin rubs his eyes.  
_It’s fine. Is there any way you can research institute employees based on just their first name?_  
Melanie says: _Sure. It’s pretty easy to find stuff on facebook. Who do you want me to look up?  
Tim and Sasha?_ It’s a long shot, but he can’t give up hope yet. He’s afraid, but he’s not hopeless. He hits play on the tape again.

“Sorry.”  
“Even if we did, I don’t know, get murdered or whatever out here, why would it matter if they never solved it? It’s not like we’d be around to be affected by it.”  
“It’s more- I don’t know. I like the idea of someone knowing who we were. And it’s not necessarily a murder thing. If I were lost, I think I’d want to be found.”  
“Alright, how's this: If you’re listening, I’m Gerard Delano, and that’s Jonathan Sims, and we were Elias Bouchard’s little lab rats! And there’s a good chance we will continue to be for a long time!”  
“You don’t know that.”  
“Planning to get a different job?  
“I might be! I think I could make a good… librarian, or something.”  
“Hmm, I could see it. If I could ever learn to see again after being blinded by rage because you abandoned me like that.”  
“In this scenario you’d own the bookstore across the street, and we’d be bitter rivals.”  
“Bitter rivals? That’s not what I want. You’re my friend, and I don’t have many of those! Maybe we’re both librarians.”  
“Fine. But I get to be your boss.”  
“Are you seriously going to argue with me about the hierarchy in the _fictional library you invented-_ ”  
“You know what, I’ve changed my mind, this doesn’t need to be recorded-”  
And the tape clicks off.  
It’s gotten a little bit late.  
Martin gets ready for bed, but there’s one thing from the tape he can’t get out of his head.  
_If I were lost, I think I’d want to be found._  
Jon is lost, yes. But, dead or not: Martin is going to find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Take Time by the books! i mean its technically from the bible but i like take time by the books more
> 
> Also, you may have noticed that this is no longer anonymous. i've decided that being embarrassed about my work is NOT the vibe i want in 2021


	6. It's just a burning memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs:  
> -veeeery slight body horror (occurs in a dream and doesn't involve gore)

Martin wakes up.  
The room is lit by a faint, blueish glow, the room dark and light, cool and yet warm enough for him to feel just fine in only his t-shirt and boxers.  
Martin, gently, so softly, gets out of bed. There’s a sound coming from the closet, so he floats closer. The hardwood floor does not creak underneath him.   
He’s dreaming, he realizes. Usually he wakes up once he realizes that he’s in a dream, but the light is still there and the sound is muffled. He moves toward the closet, and opens the door like he truly expects something other than old coats to be behind it.   
But the sound got louder.  
Martin can kind of move the coats out of the way, and he can see that that’s where the light is coming from.   
If Martin were awake he’d make some sort of joke about getting back in the closet. Martin is not awake. The coats don’t even feel like coats and he doesn’t even feel like Martin- he slides past them so easily. He pushes the last coat away, and there’s a door. He can hear music. He can’t hear his heart thundering or the butterflies in his stomach. It is a dream and thus it cannot hurt him.   
He opens the door.

It is a small room, but still one that makes absolutely no sense considering the geometry of the room he just left. He can’t tell where the lights are coming from. Pushed up against the wall to his left is a piano. And sitting on the piano bench is a person. Jon.  
He’s not playing, or anything, just sitting on the bench with his hands folded in his lap. His hair is long, streaked with gray, not entirely unlike the Jon he’d seen in the photos.  
Except, when Jon turns toward him, he doesn’t have a face. 

“Hi, Jon,” he says, barely a whisper.  
Jon… well, he doesn’t stare at him per se, as he doesn’t have any eyes, but he is still, blank face almost expectant. Martin has never felt so scrutinized in his _life_. It doesn’t help that he’s basically in his underwear. He can hear the phantom voice of himself just hours ago: _so bloody unprofessional_. So, to make up for this, he starts to fill the silence.   
“Um. I’m Martin Blackwood, I’m here to investigate you! I know you’re probably not real, as this is a dream and all, but I don’t want you to think- I don’t know. This place is weird. Your story is weird. You just… vanished. People miss you, you know? You got a letter from Georgie Barker earlier this month. She wants to hear from you.”

Jon stretches out a hand.  
“Er, sorry, I don’t have it on me? Sorry.”  
He retracts his hand.   
“Maybe if I leave it on my bedside table tomorrow night it’ll be there in my dream?”  
Jon shrugs.   
“Will… will _you_ be in my dream tomorrow night?”  
Jon shrugs again.

Then, bewilderingly, he scoots to the right on the piano bench and pats the space to his left.   
Martin stares.  
He gestures at him, actually lifting his arm and waving him over, and Martin takes the seat.   
“I haven’t had a piano lesson since I was about eight. Sorry.”  
Jon’s shoulders sag a little, but he reaches down and pulls Martin’s hand up and carefully positions his fingers over the G, B, D, and E keys. And then Jon starts playing, and it’s like he’s always known. He finds the chords easily, plays them perfectly. They’re playing the song Jon was humming on the tape earlier. Martin’s never heard it, and he can’t think of the last time he played a piano duet with someone. But, as Jon plays the melody, it feels like he knows it by heart. He can feel himself humming along.   
The song ends. Jon closes the lid of the piano. Martin is blinking away tears.  
“That was really nice.”  
Jon has his hands in his lap again, and he’s picking at a hangnail. It all feels so significant in a way that nothing having to do with Martin ever is. It feels like he’s intruding on a story that isn’t his. But that’s just another part of the job, he supposes.  
“I want to find you. And I think you want to be found.”  
Jon nods. He runs a hand over where his face would be, and then gets up and sits on the floor. Martin sits across from him.   
“D’you know sign language?”  
Jon sits up a little straighter, then spells out:  
O-N-L-Y-L-E-T-T-E-R-S

“Well, It’s something. Maybe tomorrow I’ll bring a pen and paper.”  
He nods emphatically. He lifts his hands, hesitates, and then finger spells another pair of words.  
T-H-E-A-D-M-I-R-A-L?  
He punctuates it with a tilt of his head.  
“The… Oh, the cat, right?”  
Jon nods.  
“Doing well, I think. Georgie sent a picture in her letter.”  
Jon points at himself, then opens his hand before bringing it down, palm facing the floor.   
_I want._  
“I already told you I’d bring the letter to you. Also, you lied! You know more than just letters.”  
Jon shrugged.   
Martin stares at the grain of the floor.  
“Jon, if this is just a dream and you’ve actually been dead this whole time I’ll be really mad. I want to understand who you are so badly but until I see you in real life I can’t believe anything from you. Maybe this is just a fucked up narrative produced by my subconscious. Although I guess that doesn’t really explain how I played a song I don’t even know.”   
There’s a few moments where Martin is just sitting and breathing, barely even present for his own dream. It’s so quiet, but if he strains his ears he can hear- that’s odd. There’s crickets, which is pretty normal, but there is also the soft sound of waves. It’s so pleasant, he’s content just to sit there.   
But soon enough Jon touches his shoulder, then signs:  
M-A-R-T-I-N.  
“Yeah?”  
Jon pauses, as if finding the words. Then, he holds his palm out before bringing it back to face him, like scooping something up, and then points at himself.   
_Find me._   
And Martin wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title for this chapter comes from Heartaches by Al Bowlly! This is the song I imagine Jon and Martin playing together, but honestly any melancholy song would work just fine it's not really all that important to the plot lol
> 
> ALSO uh if you know BSL and I totally fucked my descriptions up please let me know


	7. The Procession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! sorry for being gone for two weeks.   
> CWs: None

Martin immediately checks the closet for any secret doors, and it does not shock him to find it bereft. He woke up late, and he already had a text from Melanie containing the phone number of one Timothy Stoker. So he had two people to call today. 

Something that strikes him is how picture perfect the dream still is in his memory- he occasionally remembers a dream now and again, but it already starts slipping from his grasp before he’s even fully woken up from it. But he woke up and even remembered the tune of the song they played. He also remembered the sound of gentle waves, which he didn’t quite understand. He’s no geography expert, but the house wasn’t anywhere near any body of water large enough to experience waves. 

So. It was a dream. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t _real_.  
Based on the tapes, it honestly didn’t seem at all far-fetched for Jon to be able to reach out in dreams and try to communicate that way. 

As he walks downstairs, he decides to go outside and sit on the swinging bench on the porch instead of his usual spot in the kitchen for breakfast. It is already warm outside, air heavy and damp, and the wood creaks beneath him. He had not been outside since the night he first arrived here. 

The house felt entirely wrong in some way, unusable, built for someone shorter and thinner than Martin- narrow doorways, low ceilings. The way sound barely carried at all. The single, inconvenient bathroom upstairs. The emptiness of it. A place that had been lived in for years, but with very little to show for it.

He finally starts to dial Georgie. The texts he drafted in his notes app remain there, undeleted, but he just calls her. She picks up fairly quickly.   
“Hello?”  
“Hello. Are you Georgie Barker?”  
“This is she. Is this an important call, or are you trying to sell me something? Because if it’s the latter-”  
“It’s important. Melanie King gave me your number, I work with her. I’m a private investigator, my name’s Martin Blackwood.”  
“What is it, then.”  
“What do you know about the whereabouts of Jonathan Sims?”  
There are a few seconds of silence.   
And then she inhales.  
“So I take it he’s missing, then.”  
“Yes.”  
“I don’t know. I sent him a letter just a couple weeks ago. I didn’t even know he was gone. It’s not unusual to be getting radio silence from him for weeks or months at a time. Do you think he’s alive?”  
“I didn’t at first. But I’m starting to change my mind.”  
“He’s such an idiot. I love him, he’s my best friend, but he should have gotten out of there while he still could.”  
“Do _you_ think he’s alive?”  
There’s a small pause.  
“I don’t know. He’s dropped off the face of the earth before, you know? For a few days, at least. He always made it back. So yeah, I guess I do.”  
“He told you about it? Where does he go?”  
“Nowhere you’d be able to follow him. He used to call it the super-sargasso sea. Literature major, you know. Huge nerd. I don’t think he actually had a good way of describing it. I don’t think people are meant to be able to _escape_ it.”  
There’s a bit of a pause, and Martin decides to just come right out with the question at the forefront of his mind.  
“Georgie, at the risk of sounding completely deranged: Jon was in my dream last night. Do you think he could actually be trying to make contact with me?”  
“Yes.”  
“Really?”  
“He’s done it to me before. Showed up in a dream of mine, and then referenced our dream conversation in a real life conversation. It’s creepy as hell, I asked him to stop unless it was an emergency.”  
“What counts as an emergency?”  
“This. I’m honestly kind of pissed he never tried to make any kind of contact. You can’t really use phones there, so that would be our only way of talking to each other.”  
“If it makes you feel any better, it seemed like it was hard for him. Not all of him… manifested.”  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
“He didn’t have a face.”  
“Ooh. Weird. I don’t know why that is.”  
Martin sighs.  
“I feel like Melanie would be better at this than I am. I was looking for murder suspects but it’s starting to look like another universe just up and ate him.”  
“Might have. Or he walked in.”  
“Christ. I guess I’ll let you go now, I don’t have any more questions. Thank you, Georgie, this conversation was quite helpful.”  
“You’re welcome. Keep in touch, okay? Let me know if there’s something I can help you with.”  
“Yeah, I will. Bye.”   
He hangs up.

He doesn’t want to come right out and say it’s the house. Because that would be absurd. A haunted house? Or, no. An alive house, maybe. Far enough away from everything else that it wouldn’t be too strange if it sprouted legs and walked away. 

He goes back inside and sits on the couch. It’s not a comfortable couch, just a touch too stiff for his liking, but he sits with his back to the arm and his legs up on the cushions and pulls up his text conversation with Melanie.  
 _Georgie’s nice_ , he says.   
Melanie: _was she helpful?  
Yeah! Last night I had a dream and Jon was there and apparently he can communicate with people through their dreams? _  
There was a lot to unpack in that text, but it’s fine.  
 _HE WAS IN YOUR DREAM?_   
Oh no.  
 _Not in a weird way or anything!!_  
There is a pause, and he can see that she’s typing.  
 _ok gayboy_  
Another significantly longer pause.  
 _actually just call me im not typing all that out_

Melanie picks up and immediately starts talking.

“That’s super weird, though. You’re not fucking with me right? Or were all those other times when you alluded to the house having a weird vibe just you understating the volume of paranormal shit that is going on in this case.”   
Martin rubs a hand over his face.  
“I’m definitely NOT fucking with you. It’s like uh. Did you watch stranger things?”  
“No. I don’t have netflix.”  
“Well, it’s like- nevermind, it doesn’t actually matter. People did a bunch of weird experiments on Jon when he was a kid and now he’s got powers? I don’t know, it’s all really strange.”  
“God I wish I was there.”  
“I wish you were here too. Maybe your ghost expertise would be of some use.”   
“All that’s happening over here is Peter forgetting how to email. SO exhausting.”  
“Jesus. It’s scary over here but I prefer it to that.”  
“Yeah. I do have to, uh…”  
“Oh, yeah, I’ve got stuff to do here as well. Calls to make, stuff to go through.”  
“I know how it is.”  
“Bye, Melanie.”  
“Bye.”

And then he gets up to turn on the TV.   
It would be strange, he thinks, to watch regular TV in a house like this. It turns on, but he can’t flip through the channels- which makes sense, because there’s no antenna. So, he resigns himself to more horror and takes out the first VHS tape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from The Procession by David Last, which is on the Meow Wolf soundtrack. Also, i did want to let you know that jonmartin IS going to happen at some point but i'm not tagging it yet.


	8. It's true, but it's not funny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is four pages long in google docs and it is the longest chapter of this fic so far. i hope you like it :)
> 
> CWs:   
> -Implied/attempted drugging

The tapes don’t have dates, but he hopes they’re in chronological order anyway. He takes the one furthest on the left and puts it in the VCR. He is sitting close enough to feel the warmth of the television. 

It’s a little hard to see, at first. Blurry. And then it focuses on a man’s shoes, before the camera being awkwardly angled toward the face of the person recording. “Eric Delano recording,” He says. He walks around the institute, and once again Martin’s taken aback by how intensely normal it is. Yellowing paint, unflattering lighting. Martin’s worked in places that look like this. “This is the archives.” he says. And then Eric rounds the corner and Jon is there. He’s got a pencil in his hand and he’s staring at a piece of paper, drawing a picture. He looks so focused, so intense, that Martin almost laughs. All the seriousness of a middle aged businessman in the frame of a kid no older than ten.   
“Jon! You’re on video!”

Jon startles and looks up.  
“I found my old camera. Got it in… oh… ‘78? ‘79? But it still works! Thought I’d record an institute tour.”  
“Why? You work here every day.”   
“So when you grow up you can remember what it was like. I always used to wish I had a video of my old house or the school I used to go to.”  
“Can’t you go visit?”  
“Someone else lives in the house, and the school got torn down years ago. Besides, even if I were able to visit now, it wouldn’t be the same.”  
“Okay. Can I come with you on the tour?”  
“Sure.”  
The tour continues. The carpet looks disgusting, dark beige, the sort that hides dirt enough that you never really know how badly it needs to be vacuumed. They go down a flight of steps, and the dingy carpet turns into concrete.   
“We’re in the basement now, this is where most of our researchers do their work…”  
There’s a low, droning sound in the background. Martin can’t tell if it’s coming from the tape or from below the house.   
“No one’s here now, though, I think. I think they’re on their lunch break.”  
“Why don’t they just pack a lunch?”  
“Jon, I know you’re a brave kid, but doesn’t this place scare you? I know I wouldn’t want to be down here more than I need to be.”  
“It does,” Jon admits, quietly. 

Martin feels his gut twist, and he knows that this is where it happens. Somewhere behind one of these doors in the basement of the Magnus institute is where they do those terrible things to Jon. But it seems like Eric doesn’t know about it. And he’s still working here, so it’s before April 1998. So something must have happened between this tape and that recording to inform Eric and, presumably, Michael of the things that are being done to him.

“These are some of the labs,” Eric says, opening the doors, and then he opens one specific door and _gasps_.  
“I guess I haven’t been down here in a while. I had no idea about this,” he says.  
Martin’s eyes widen as he looks at it. It takes up an entire wall of the lab, a complex panel and switches and so many wires, flowing out of it like blood, the entire thing so eerily still and silent that it pulsates just with the _potential_ of what it could do. The machine.   
“What _is_ this thing?” Eric says, and Jon, offscreen, inhales sharply.  
“Jon?”  
“I know what it does. But I’m not allowed to tell you.”  
“Why?”  
“Mr. Bouchard made me sign a Non Disclosure Agreement,” Jon says, with the tone of a child who is very proud to know legal terms.   
“Wh- Jon, you’re _nine_.”  
“And a half.”  
“Nine and a half, fine. Either way there is no way anything he made you sign is legally binding.”  
“I don’t want to make him mad.”  
“That’s… that’s fair, actually. I’ll have to have a word with him about it. I’ll get in trouble, not you.”  
Eric sighs.   
“In the meantime, let’s get out of here.”  
They start to trudge out of the lab, out of the basement, up the stairs and back into the archive.   
“Is it bad?” Eric asks.  
“It’s just weird. I don’t think I should say more than that. They give me a pill and a juicebox to make me forget about it but I never actually take them,” Jon says.  
“Doesn’t Elias notice that you’re not taking them?”  
“I put them in between my cheek and my teeth. And then I spit it out when he leaves.”  
“That’s good. As a general rule, don’t take any pills that people give you unless you know exactly what it is and what it’ll do. Also, don’t smoke.”  
“I know. I’ve seen the videos about lung cancer.”  
Watching this knowing that Jon grew up to smoke isn’t exactly funny, but it is certainly something.  
The rest of the video is just a normal institute tour. The Magnus institute seems overwhelmingly mundane in every department except for research, with normal cubicles and break rooms and desks and shitty office chairs. The tape ends without any more drama. 

There was a lot to think about, there. But it was nearly five, and he still needed to call Tim.

He’s more nervous about this call than he was about Georgie. Him and Georgie had a mutual friend, but he and Tim were complete strangers. But he still types in the number and listens to the phone ring. 

“Hello?”  
The voice on the other end is deep and warm. Martin likes it immediately.  
“Hi, my name is Martin Blackwood. Is this Timothy Stoker?”  
“Yes.” His voice immediately sounds more suspicious.  
“Great, I just had a few questions to ask you about the Magnus institute?”  
“I’m done with them. I quit months ago. I swear, I thought I asked you people to stop calling me.”  
“Oh, I don’t work there.”   
“Who do you work for, then.”  
“Peter Lukas? I’m a private investigator. Jonathan Sims is-”  
“Fuck off. I don’t care. He didn’t kill anyone, but I do not want to talk about him any more than that.”  
“Wh- I know he didn’t kill anyone. He’s missing. No one’s seen him since May. I wanted to ask if you knew anything about his whereabouts and what you were doing in the house from 2015-2016.”  
Tim sighs, heavily, and then laughs. It is a cruel laugh, one that doesn’t match the image of the person it came from.   
“Of course he went fucking missing. We were dropping like flies.”  
“ _Please,_ Mr. Stoker, you’re the only person I’ve been able to contact who knows what happened at the house.”  
“Fine. We went there to research- I don’t know. An anomaly. A thin spot between this dimension and a different one. We all used to call it ‘the house’, like you do, because even though we all lived there for a year it sure as hell wasn’t a _home_. But Sasha started calling it the ‘House of Eternal Return’ and we all started to as well. Jon was… well, I guess the closest thing I can compare him to is a deep sea diver. He would go into this other dimension, explore, and after a day or two, we’d pull him back out. If I had to guess where he is, it would be there. After Gerry died and Sasha vanished, I quit and moved back to London. So if he tried to go back, he wouldn’t have anyone to get him out, and he would have gotten stuck.”  
“Sasha vanished?”  
“Yeah. That mission was supposed to last exactly a year, but Jon kept calling Elias and asking for extensions. He was insatiable. He didn’t care about anything else, I don’t think. Last January, Gerry died. It shouldn’t have been surprising that one of us would have some health problem like that, you know, none of us got to see doctors and Gerry was almost as obsessed with it all as Jon was so he didn’t particularly want it to end either. But we should have noticed. He would complain about headaches almost every day…”  
He pauses.  
“Sasha went missing just a couple weeks later. I had only been staying there because she had been. She was my best friend. She was there one day, and then the next she had completely vanished. I was distraught, Jon was obsessed with the other dimension and didn’t seem to give a shit about me or the fact that she had just gone missing. It was just… too much. I left. And I don’t care if that makes me an asshole, or whatever, because I _can’t_ waste away in that _fucking_ house with a mad scientist as my only company. I swear to god, Jon is so far up his own ass he truly can’t bring himself to care that someone went missing. Figures that now he’s the missing one, you know?”  
“He has a picture of you and Sasha hanging in the hall.”  
Martin didn’t know what else to say, but the awkward silence that follows is near unbearable.  
“He’s such a prick.”  
Tim releases a rather shaky breath.  
“I took care of him, you know? After Gerry died, there were a couple days where he just… couldn’t function. Shellshocked. I think Gerry was the only person who actually understood him. I used to like him, used to talk to him, but I never got him, same with Sasha. Jon practically didn’t get out of bed for an entire day. I held him and comforted him and brought him sandwiches but he _never_ did the same for me. I think he wanted to find Sasha, but he couldn’t figure out how. He just kept researching. He didn’t let himself feel it the way he had with Gerry. He got to grieve but I never could. Jon thinks he can solve every problem and somehow he hasn’t figured out that he just _can’t_ yet.”  
“I’m sorry.”  
“Yeah,” Tim’s voice breaks slightly, “I am too. I don’t want Jon to be missing but I don’t think it’s worth dragging more people into this. Martin, was it?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Get the hell out of there. Seriously. That house… I think it does things to people. Even if you have to quit your job, just… escape. Speaking from personal experience, whatever answers you’re looking for won’t be worth it.”  
“I don’t think I can do that. Thank you for your time, Mr. Stoker, you’ve been very helpful-”  
“Call me Tim. I… I know I get kind of aggressive about this. Sorry. I’m going to therapy for it. You’re smart enough to be a private investigator, so you’re probably smart enough to know when you need to run.”  
“It’s alright.”  
“I guess just- even though I’m mad at him, Jon is-was my friend. So... call me if you need anything. I get that I’m the only surviving member of that mission, so if you have questions about it ask me. Just… get out of there as soon as you can.”  
“Thank you, Tim. I wasn’t joking when I said you were very helpful. I’m working off of photos and cassette tapes, and those aren’t the most useful when trying to come up with the full story.”  
“Bye. Good luck, Martin.”  
“Thanks. Bye.”

Martin gets up and starts making dinner, and he tries not to hurt while thinking about what went on in this house just months ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: oh fuck yeah longer chapter i think i'm getting better at pacing and not having everyone just rush through everything all the time  
> me [realizing that this means i have to go in and use html to italicize it even more than i used to]: actually this sucks
> 
> Title is from Some things last a long time by Daniel Johnston! I've had it on the playlist for this fic for a while but I didn't realize how well it would fit this chapter esp. the tim conversation until just now.


	9. There is no new thing under the sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs:  
> -Vomiting  
> -Experimentation (similar to that in chapter 2)  
> -Restraints? (idk how to tag it but. i thought i should)

And then, in the morning, Martin wakes up. The air is still. The sun shines softly down onto him. The birds are singing. And Martin is _pissed_.

Well, not exactly. He’s just- frustrated. All that yesterday, only for him to have no dream. He needed to see Jon again, to be able to actually talk to him, to give him the letter from Georgie, and if he didn’t dream, he couldn’t do that. 

With a groan, he walks across the hallway to the bathroom to wash his face. He nearly stumbles on the tiles, expecting a flat surface only to find them… curved. Which is odd, considering that he’s been in this room many times and the floor had been normal. The floor around the sink looks almost rippled, like a fluid that’s been disturbed. He leans down, and it’s real, floor impossibly distorted, and the tile seems almost smug about it.

God. Tim was right about one thing- the house certainly does do things to you. Martin washes his face in the kitchen sink instead, and then puts the kettle on. Tim had said that the house was a ‘thin spot’- Martin thinks about the clock thing. He thinks about the bathroom floor. He pours the boiling water over the teabag. If Tim is telling the truth, that would make a lot of sense. Two dimensions, with one point of overlap, and things get _weird_ there. Like a double exposure. He wonders if Jon would describe it that way. He likes photography.

Jesus, Martin needs to stop getting attached to people he’s investigating. He takes the teabag out.

Martin makes his way back to the living room, armed with a cup of tea, and puts in another tape. He settles on the couch, hoping for something helpful, and if not _helpful_ at least not too horrifying.

When the tape begins, Michael is there, and he’s wielding a classical guitar. _Why are they all so musical,_ Martin thinks. It’s a pleasant enough tune. It feels almost out of place, if anything. Martin tried his hand at guitar, ages ago, when he needed another elective in school. Took band and everything, but he just couldn’t get the hang of it and ended up switching to creative writing. 

Michael has long fingers, and he seems to reach all the frets easily. His long hair is tied back in a ponytail. He looks like he could be on an album cover. Or on, like, a tiny desk concert. Soothing. But, unfortunately, the song ends after about two minutes, and Michael looks up at the camera, about to open his mouth to say something. The video cuts off. 

That was nice, but it seems like a little bit of a waste of good film if they’re only going to use a couple minutes of it. Martin’s halfway to replacing the tape when it cuts back in, and the video is… sideways. Michael’s voice comes in, saying, “Do you think that will work?”  
And then Gertrude: “Elias is very impatient, and _very_ cocky. I think that would suffice.”  
Jon, very timidly, asks, “What are you going to say if he asks why you’re recording it?”  
“That I have a theory. It’s worked every other time I record an experiment.”  
“Oh.”  
“Come along, Jon.”  
“Okay.”  
And then the camera is picked up.  
A few minutes of walking down the hall, down those stairs, and into the basement, and Martin almost feels sick knowing what he’s about to see.   
The machine is still glowing, still humming. Except now, there is also a chair. There are straps to affix Jon to it. A researcher straps him down, leaning down to ask him if it pinches anywhere, and Jon shakes his head no. He is so small. He turns his head and looks at Gertrude, and then into the camera. 

Knowing what happens next did not make it any less excruciating. If anything, it hurts more now that he’s met Jon. Elias flips a switch. The hum gets louder, and Jon screws his eyes shut. The video gets a little- it’s odd. The more switches Elias flicks, the more the video looks like an oil spill. The reds, blues, and greens start to separate out, the humming getting louder and louder. It’s not until the last switch is flipped that Jon starts to scream and struggle against the restraints. It’s so difficult to see. The screaming stops, suddenly. The shapes are impossible to make out.   
“My god-”  
Elias’ voice is hushed and awed.  
“He’s _there,_ ” he says.   
“E-Elias, look, look at the clock-”  
“It’s just a side effect, pay it no mind. Things are happening in this room- _history is being made_ \- and you’re complaining about a clock?”  
“It feels like the floor is _breathing-_ ”  
“Ignore it,” Elias snaps. “Just a few more minutes- we’ll be able to get him back and ask him about what he saw.”

Elias flips the switches back one by one, and the video snaps back to normal. The researchers start to undo the restraints. Jon looks ill, and, as ill children are often wont to do, vomits. 

“Ugh. You there- fetch a glass of water,” Elias says, and a researcher scurries out of the room. When they come back, Jon takes tiny sips of it.  
“I’m sorry for throwing up-” Jon starts, and Elias immediately interrupts him.  
“But what did you see?”  
“It’s- it’s hard to describe,” Jon starts. His hands are shaking. “It’s like here, kind of. But everything’s wrong. Empty? But- breathing. It’s bright. It’s… loud, in some places, but too quiet in others. It gets more normal the further out you go- but still. Weird.”  
“Why were you sick?”  
“It’s like motion sickness. Going from one place to another hurts so bad and it’s so confusing.”  
“I see.”  
And the video cuts off.

Martin has… quite a few questions about that. Why was Gertrude really filming, and why couldn’t Elias find out? Why did the video start with Michael? What happens to Jon’s body while he’s in the other dimension? 

But beneath the questions, Martin was starting to form a theory.  
Prior to this video, Martin had sort of assumed that Jon had strange sci-fi powers or something. But some of the things in the video made him realize that perhaps it wasn’t Jon at all. The machine was causing it. The same things that happened in the room with the machine were happening in the house. So, Martin realized with no small amount of dread- the machine was somewhere _in the house_. And he had a bad feeling that he was going to need to find it to be able to make any real progress.

But instead of doing that, he rubs at his face, gets up, and puts in another tape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi :) Chapter title is, once again, from Take Time by the books.   
> Also, it totally slipped my mind, but i have a podcast sideblog now! So if that's something you'd be interested in following, its @hartropiltz on tumblr. thank you for reading!


	10. Junoism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs: None that I can think of

Gertrude Robinson is an old woman, tiny, frail, wisps of white hair falling out of her bun, a notebook in one pocket of her cardigan and several pens and pencils sticking out of the other. In the tape, though, she has her eyebrows furrowed, and she looks genuinely threatening.  
“Uh, Gertrude? What happened?” Michael’s voice comes in, clear and concerned.  
She sinks down into her chair at her desk, and puts her head in her hands.  
“Elias threatened me.”  
She rubs her hands across her face, clearly frustrated, and continues,  
“He said if I gave that tape to the police he would find a way to make my life a living hell.”  
“What?”  
“I want to make it clear, I want that man in prison as much as the rest of you do. I can certainly be cold. I know that. But I’m not _heartless_. Seeing Jonathan come out of that room shaking every week infuriates me. However-”  
She inhales.

“I think that this plan of ours is flawed. Deeply. Elias is an incredibly rich man, and we did not account for this. He could easily lie and bribe his way out of any legal situation we put him in.”  
There’s a beat of silence.  
“I’ll turn it in. I don’t care what Elias does to me.”  
“Eric. Are you paying attention? I’m not saying it won’t work because I am frightened of what he’ll do to me. I’m saying that it won’t work because he has never faced consequences for his own actions. So, we need to come up with something better. Something foolproof.”

“Gertrude,” Michael is saying, but Gertrude does not appear to be listening. She stands up, shoos Eric away, and carefully pries up a piece of loose floorboard. The camera shakes slightly while Eric is moving, and again when he gasps. There is a small gun in her hand.  
“I am trusting that you both find this as serious as I do.”  
Eric and Michael both react at the same time.  
“Jesus Christ!”  
“When did you get a _gun?_ ”  
Gertrude only acknowledges the latter.  
“Years ago. It’s dangerous to be without one- useful if you’re getting mugged.”  
“Yeah, or if you’re trying to _kill your fucking boss!_ ” Eric says.  
“Come on, now. You’ve both had ample time to learn that I’m not the frail old woman I sometimes pretend to be.”  
The camera pans over to Michael, who is wringing his hands.  
“When I started this job I didn’t realize it would lead me to planning an _assassination_ ,” he says nervously, whisper-shouting the last word like he’d get in trouble for just saying it.  
“Elias isn’t important enough to be assassinated. This is just murder.”  
“Yeah, Eric, like that sounds so much better!”  
Michael is jittery in a way that Martin’s never seen him, all of his other video and audio appearances depicting him as a calm person with careful, neat handwriting and a desperate desire to please.

“Let’s all calm down. I’m not saying that this is the solution. I’m just putting it out there.”  
“It’s a terrible idea!”  
“But we can’t rule it out. It would- Eric, are you _recording_ this-”  
And the tape ends. 

Martin wonders what happened to Michael and Gertrude. This tape helped explain what the deal was with the last tape, but brought up many more questions. Obviously, it didn’t work- or, they didn’t end up trying this. Elias Bouchard is still alive. 

He texts Melanie about it.  
hey, could you research Michael Shelley and Gertrude Robinson?

_ofc_  
She texts back pretty fast, which makes him wonder what Peter’s making her do over there. Probably not much. Days in the office tended to be pretty slow.  
A few minutes went by.  
_michael was missing. but they actually found him. he’s living in russia now._

_really?_  
That’s exciting. Not another dead person to contend with, at least.  
_i might be able to email him? hes a painter now_

_that would be great_ , Martin says. 

_it looks like gertrude’s in prison._  
Interesting. 

_Ah_ , Martin says, _that tracks, actually._

_wasn’t she a little old lady?_

_she carried a gun, apparently._

_HAHA_

Melanie sends the last one almost immediately, before following it up with:  
_absolute legend_

_I guess._

He puts his phone down.

It’s harder to relax, now that he knows that the machine is somewhere here. Not that it was easy to relax in the first place- sleeping in the house of a missing person isn’t conducive to a restful environment, obviously, but he can’t stop thinking about the hum.  
He gets up, and walks through the dining room to the kitchen, through the laundry room, and out the back door. There’s a tiny garden that he hadn’t noticed before. Little popsicle sticks poke out of the ground, labeling all of the dead plants. Whose was this? How long had these plants gone uncared for?  
The background noise was quieter out there. The sun was bright, beating down on the back of his neck as he got on his hands and knees to weed the garden. People had always told him that he seemed the type to keep plants, and that was understandable as he used to lean hard into his nurturing disposition to fly under the radar, but he didn’t really know much about gardening. He tugged on a weed, and when it did not immediately come up, he pulled a little harder until a sizable clump of roots and dirt came up with it. It was hard to explain why he was doing this, but a lot of things were fairly challenging to understand lately, so Martin figured that at least he would be challenging in a relatively mundane way. 

He was still thinking about Michael. In the tape, he was nervous. But he’d still dropped everything and moved to Russia after… something. He knew what was happening to Jon, but he did not quit. He knew Gertrude had been imprisoned, but he didn’t quit. Something that happened in 2011 was apparently the last straw, and it was so bad he needed to leave the country.  
It’s frustrating. Martin feels glad to be pulling weeds, as it’s good stress relief, but he is rapidly getting a sunburn.

He’s always burnt easily. It’s one of the things that annoys him about himself- he burns easily, blushes quickly, and bruises at the lightest touch. One of his earliest memories is him as a young boy, about to run through the door to play in the yard, before his mother snatches him back by the collar and rubs sunscreen into the back of his neck and the tips of his ears. Inconvenient, he thinks, even though he was only about seven at the time and had nowhere to be and no one to impress. Even though this was before his mother had stopped caring if he got a sunburn. He wonders, not for the first time, if he would have been friends with Jon if they’d known each other then. He could have used a friend after his dad left and he’d moved and switched schools. 

Another thing that annoys Martin about himself is his sentimentality, jesus christ.

He goes back inside to prevent further damage to his neck. He’s always believed in the power of a few hours in the sun, and when he looks in the bathroom mirror, he doesn’t think he’s imagining the way he looks better. He’s inside a _lot_. 

He settles under the duvet in the bedroom, and, despite not being a very religious man, he prays to see Jon in his dream that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise, bitch. i bet you thought you'd seen the last of me.
> 
> BUT in all seriousness i am not super proud of this chapter (sorry) but i've been staring at it for like a week and at some point you just have to say "you know what? im posting it". The next one should be very interesting and hopefully be up in a few days, i've already got some of it written.
> 
> title is from junoism by pleasure corporation, and according to urban dictionary it means to worship money which kind of fits elias, but i honestly chose this as the chapter title because it was fun to imagine gertrude with a gun (guntrude) to this song


	11. A carefully trained voice; a scientific voice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs:  
> -temporary amnesia

The next dream comes to him slowly, rather than the way it suddenly began before. He is not in the bedroom, either. He is standing in the hall. He would have expected the humming to be louder- but it’s dead silent. He pokes his head into the bathroom, and- yep. The ripples are there. He starts to go down the stairs. The living room looks the same, and so does the kitchen. It is so quiet. He walks into the laundry room, so far unchanged, and he very slowly opens the backdoor. 

It feels like he’s just flipped on the lights after sitting in the dark for an hour, that’s how different it is. It is absolutely _not_ the yard he had just been in a few hours ago. The dirt is very very dark, almost black, but there are large… structures, clearly indicating a path for him. So, he starts to move forward. The ground ahead of him starts to fill with foliage, vines getting bigger and bigger until he has to climb over them. It takes a while for him to make the connection that he’s in the garden- or, some alternate realization of it. That these huge plants are very similar to the ones that he’d seen wilted and dying not too long ago. 

The last vine comes up to his ribs, and he has to hoist himself up awkwardly and find a foothold in order not to completely lose his balance and fall off the other side. He makes it over, though, and he is somehow _indoors_ , and he is lucid enough to realize that while, yes, this is a dream and dreams are strange, this is _really fucking weird_. The tiles are black and white, just like they are in the kitchen. There is a large fountain in the center of the room, and when he looks inside he can see little koi fish swimming around. On the other side of the room is a door. 

He wants to just open it, but for reasons that are completely beyond him, he reaches up and knocks. He doesn’t hear a response, which disappoints him, but he enters the room anyway. The room is black and white. It is also quite similar to the kitchen in the house, with a round table and cabinets and a door on the opposite wall, but everything is stylized in such a way that it looks like he’s in a cartoon from the 1950s. Looking to his left makes him notice the radio, which plays static. 

Martin is nothing if not a sucker for retro things, so he fiddled with the knobs for a moment. Static. Static. Music, fading into and out of static. And then, a woman’s voice, filling the room with such clarity that Martin startles and looks around-

 _“A house of eternal return,”_ she says.  
Martin inspects an entirely opaque black and white glass on the table.  
_“Things start to - to - repeat - repeat - repeat - “_  
The fridge doesn’t open when he pulls on the handle.  
_“The world folds in on itself,”_ the woman says.  
One of the cabinets has a framed photo in it, familiar but now cartoonish, and it looks like-  
_“It all feels re - re - recursive. You don’t know if you’re seeing something for the first time or if it’s a rehashing of something you’ve already - something you’ve already seen.”_  
The picture is of three people sitting together. It shouldn’t be hard for him to recognize, stylized as it is, so why is it taking him so long to-  
_“Seen. Seen. Seen.”_  
Tim, Sasha, and Jon. That’s what it is. That’s the picture. 

The radio is still stuck in a loop of ‘seen’, so Martin looks at it to figure out how to get the damn thing to shut up already, when he looks at the back of it. It doesn’t make sense for a radio from this time period to have this, but there’s a little compartment there, and when he presses it, it pops open and there’s a tape inside. He grabs it quickly, greedily, and goes to try the other door. 

It opens onto a balcony. It’s narrow, enough so that he almost can’t fit, but before he can grumble about it, his attention is snagged by a person sitting on the bench. 

A person who is not Jon. But he still recognizes them.

“Sasha,” he says.  
She turns to him, the sequins on the neck of her cocktail dress catching the light.  
“Hello,” she says, and smiles placidly, “Have we met?”  
“Er, no, I’m Martin, I’m currently investigating the disappearance of Jonathan Sims?”  
_And you,_ he doesn’t add.  
“Oh, someone’s gone missing? How awful,” she says, and raises one daintily gloved hand to her mouth to indicate her shock.  
“Are you alright?”  
“No, silly,” she laughs, “I’m Sasha!”  
She giggles like she’s just told the best joke in the world.  
“Can you tell me anything about him? Have you seen him?”  
“I can’t say I have. Never met him. But he must have been a bit dull, to have gone missing like that.”  
“Sasha, that’s- well, first of all, that’s a bit insensitive- but second of all, _you’re_ missing! No one’s seen you for months!”  
She furrows her brow.  
“That can’t be right. This is my house,” she says, gesturing to the kitchen behind her, “And wouldn’t that be the first place people would look?’  
“Sure. But when was the last time you left your house?”  
“I don’t… well… I suppose I can’t say for sure.”  
“And do you have any memories that come from outside your house?”  
She’s silent for a few moments.  
“Well?” Martin asks.  
“Let me think, Martin,” she snaps, and then, almost immediately, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… it’s hard to remember. It feels like it’s all just out of reach.”  
“I know a bit of it, if you want me to tell you.”  
“Please.”  
“You worked for the Magnus institute, studying a house that you called the house of eternal return. Your coworkers were named Gerry, Jon, and Tim.”  
“I loved him,” she says.  
“Which one?”  
“Well, all of them, I suppose, but I remember Tim. We were close.”  
“He said you were his best friend.”  
“You talked to him? How is he?”  
“He misses you a lot.”  
“I miss him too. I didn’t even realize that I missed him too,” she says, and Martin can see that her eyes are wet.  
“Do you remember, then?”  
“I don’t know if I remember all of it. I don’t know what happened. I was wandering around, lost, and then I got here, and the view from the balcony was so nice that I just… stayed, I guess.”  
“Do you know how I can get you out?”  
“Hmm. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t done it before.”  
“Can you at least tell me where the machine is?”  
“What?”  
“The machine that you use to get here. I know it’s in the house, but I don’t know where.”  
“Oh,” she laughs, and it’s much more natural than the stilted laugh that she did before, and says “Martin, the machine isn’t in the house. The machine is the house.”  
“It-what? How?”  
“I don’t know how they did it, but the whole house functions as a bigger and more powerful device than the one they use at the actual institute.”  
“Is it safe?”  
“Of course not. I’ve been stuck here since… christ, what month is it now? Never mind. I’ve been here long enough to start to forget I used to be a person, that’s long enough. The house- not this one, the real one that you’ve been looking at, it lures you in and it makes you feel safe. But it isn’t. In this version of the house, your setting starts to change your mind. I was in that stupid kitchen for so long that I became the person the house wanted me to be. Do you see?”  
Martin does not see. He doesn’t really know what is going on.  
“No,” he says, “but maybe you can explain it to me more after we get you out of here?”  
“Sure. But you’re not going to be able to do that tonight, anyway.”  
“Oh.”  
“The path between here and there hasn’t really been traversed since whenever Jon went missing, so you’ll have to do some work over there to get it opened up again,” she explains.  
“How?”  
“It’s mostly… quiet introspection? I know that ‘traversing between worlds with the power of meditation’ sounds like weird new age pseudoscience, but that’s really how it happens. Jon’s obviously quite good at it since he’s been researching this stuff for years, but it’s one of those things that’s hard to learn but easy to master. I did it a couple times, but the one time I did it accidentally I managed to get stuck.”  
“Huh. Have you seen Jon?”  
“Not at all. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to since I first got here.”  
“Thanks for answering my questions, Sasha. I’m going to try to get you out soon, alright?”  
“Yeah. Nice to meet you, Martin.”

Martin doesn’t wake up immediately. He’s not sure what he’s got to do to wake up, but he retraces his footsteps and ends up back in the house’s kitchen. He walks up the stairs, and goes into the master bedroom. He listens carefully for the sound of a piano, but hears none. He gets into bed and the dream ends- but when he wakes up he is still clutching the tape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from bird tutorial by sidney gish!  
> also this chapter has been in my spreadsheet for this fic for WEEKS and ive been so excited to write it and share it with you fdhsjkfs i love sasha so much


End file.
